Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi‘s “Free Solo” leads the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards with six bids, including Best Documentary and Best Director. Also nabbing nominations in those two top categories is Bing Liu‘s “Minding the Gap,” which is also in the running for Best First Time Director, as well as “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” “Dark Money,” “Hitler’s Hollywood,” and “Three Identical Strangers.” In all 10 films were nominated for the top prize at these awards bestowed by the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. (BFCA). The other four are “Crime + Punishment,” “Hal,” “RBG,” and “Wild Wild Country.”

Last year the BFCA nominated 16 films for this award, three of which –“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” “Faces Places,” and “Strong Island” — went on to contend at the Oscars. And in 2016 the BFCA shared its Best Documentary winner (“O.J.: Made in America”) with the Academy Awards while also previewing three of the other contenders: “13th,” “Fire at Sea,” and “Life, Animated.”

The other precursors are then Cinema Eye Honors, expected to announce the nominees for their 12th annual awards in early November, and the International Documentary Association, which announced a short list of 31 titles already and will reveal the nominees by the end of October. The IDA short list includes BFCA nominees “Crime + Punishment,” “Dark Money,” “Free Solo,” “Minding the Gap,” “Three Identical Strangers” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”